Anxiety

How philosophy can teach us to be less anxious about being anxious by understanding that it's an essential part of being human.

"Readers will appreciate Chopra’s lucid explanations and refreshing assertion that anxiety is an inherent part of being human that doesn’t necessarily need fixing. . . . This carefully considered assessment of a 'universal, perennial human condition' provides plenty of food for thought."

"“[A] useful introduction to the work of thinkers who confront, rather than recoil from, our most fruitfully unpleasant feeling . . . Chopra’s book represents an urgent attempt to recover anxiety from those who threaten to medicate or counsel it out of existence. It leads by example, providing a rewarding and challenging alternative to the facile self-help that it implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) critiques.”" ---Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post

"Chopra has composed a graceful account of the intrinsic relationship between philosophy and anxiety—and how it compels us to question the very meaning of our existence. The aim of this unique book is not to calm our inner seas, but to provide tools for reinterpreting our relation to the anxiety that drives us to the clinic and the medicine cabinet. Chopra has hit the bull’s eye." ---Gordon Marino, LitHub

"Chopra is right to want to normalize the anxiety that people really do feel, saying that it is wrong to think that mental health consists in being anxiety-free. His basic therapeutic advice—not to push anxiety away but “to see what it ‘points to’ ”—is also spot-on . . . a good primer on the major philosophers of anxiety" ---Julian Baggini, Wall Street Journal

"A book of therapeutic philosophy. . . . Chopra does a great job bringing different philosophical perspectives into his conversation about anxiety." ---Oscar Davis, The Conversation AU

"[ Anxiety] takes a critical yet not unsympathetic view of the medicating of anxiety in modern society. . . . [It] offers a unique, informed, and welcome perspective on a challenging societal issue."

Samir Chopra is a philosophical counselor and professor emeritus of philosophy at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author and coauthor of many books, including Shyam Benegal: Philosopher and Filmmaker , A Legal Theory for Autonomous Artificial Agents , and Eye on Cricket: Reflections on the Great Game. His essays have appeared in the Nation , the Los Angeles Review of Books , Aeon , Psyche , and other publications.